Echolocation

What is echolocation?

Echolocation is sound waves or echoes that one famous person called Ben Underwood and animals use to go from place to place. Whales use echolocation to find their prey, bats use it to navigate and find food in the dark and humans use it to find their way around if they are blind.

Echolocation is using sound to locate something. Echolocation (or Bio Sonar) is a sonar used by some humans and different kinds of animals, particularly bats and whales. They use these echoes to locate and identify objects. Echolocation is used for navigation and hunting. If a blind person was to use echolocation, they would use their hearing senses to sense the echoes that reflect off near objects in their environment.

To echolocate something you would have to create sound from an object or your mouth to make sound waves, so when they reflect off an object it will turn into a echo that will navigate you to a destination.

Ben Underwood:

Ben Underwood, the person who never let his blindness stop him from skating, biking, playing video games and other stuff that no other blind human could do. Ben Underwood is really unique because he can do stuff that no other person human could do. When Ben Underwood was alive he was blind, both of his eyes were removed because he had eye cancer when he was three, leaving him with no eye vision at all, Unbelievably he taught himself to see using sound. When he was using echolocation he taught himself how to ride roller skates play video games and ride a bike perfectly, he also can tell where things are that no other blind person can see.

He realised that when he was clicking with his tongue the sound reflected off things around him giving him an idea what was there. When he started was blind he could get around to his destination without seeing anything, people telling him where to go and without using a guide dog or those stick things, isn't that incredible! Ben Underwood learnt how to find his way around by sensing the sound waves that reflect off objects in his environment around him.

Sadly in 2009 this famous person died of retinal cancer (eye cancer) at age 16.